x-box: Why no mods?

[Johnny_L.A]

I don’t have an x-box, nor do I plan to get one; but I read this:

Microsoft bans up to 1 million Xbox Live users

<snip>

“In some cases though, modding (modifying) is done to allow a bigger hard drive, and given that the supplied hard drives are still very small comparative to what is available on the market, and expensive also, you can see why some people are going to be very angry.”

However, he said, “the biggest problem in banning modded consoles — and this gets missed by most people — is that it is the console itself that gets banned. So many of these consoles get sold secondhand, even sometimes unwittingly by stores (that) accept them as trade-ins, to people who assume they have just bought a functioning console. And while it might technically boot up, the console is blacklisted and therefore pretty much useless to them.”

<snip>

The company “needs to do a better job of explaining to people why modding consoles isn’t acceptable, and needs to find a way to help people tricked into purchasing blacklisted consoles,” said Taylor.

In its Xbox Live and Windows games’ “Terms of Use” agreement, as of September 2008, Microsoft says that players are to use “only authorized software and hardware to access the Service,” and that they agree that their software and hardware “have not been modified in any unauthorized way … and that we have the right to send data, applications or other content to any software or hardware that you are using to access the Service for the express purpose of detecting an unauthorized modification.”

I completely understand that they don’t want people using pirated software. But why do they forbid installing a larger hard drive?

[gazpacho]

@Johnny_L.A

I completely understand that they don’t want people using pirated software. But why do they forbid installing a larger hard drive?

Because they sell the larger hard drive for the Xbox at a very inflated price.

The 120 gig xbox drive is about $135.
160 gig commodity drives can be hard for about $40

[Johnny_L.A]

Title should say ‘mods’, not ‘nods’.

[beowulff]

@Johnny_L.A

Title should say ‘mods’, not ‘nods’.

Maybe you should give a nod to the Mods…

[Palooka]

Plus once you’re running your own HDD, you’re only one small step away from piracy or pretty much anything you want to do.

[Johnny_L.A]

@Palooka

Plus once you’re running your own HDD, you’re only one small step away from piracy or pretty much anything you want to do.

I don’t follow. If I put a bigger hard drive on my computer, I’m no closer to piracy than I was with a smaller drive.

[ZenBeam]

I thought one of the things that could be done with a modded box was to hack games to give the player an advantage.

Agree that putting in tiny hard drives, and overcharging for a slightly bigger tiny drive is pretty crappy.

[samclem]

Since this is related to games, perhaps someone over in the Game Room might have insight. Moved.

samclem Moderator, General Questions

[Richard_Pearse]

@Johnny_L.A

I completely understand that they don’t want people using pirated software. But why do they forbid installing a larger hard drive?

My guess is that they don’t want to get into the game of allowing some mods and not others, and having to define exactly what is and isn’t allowed, and then making sure they can actually detect exactly how the machine has been modded. It seems to me it’s much easier to just outright ban all mods.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

I’m completely fine with them banning every and all modification, even hard drives. I assume Microsoft wants you to buy their proprietary 120 gigabyte drives, and people don’t either want to buy them or can do their own for cheaper. However, if you want to play on Live, I don’t see what’s wrong with Microsoft enforcing its own rules. If you violate the rules, you’ll get smacked down. It’s just that simple.

[Simplicio]

@1920s Style "Death Ray"

My guess is that they don’t want to get into the game of allowing some mods and not others, and having to define exactly what is and isn’t allowed, and then making sure they can actually detect exactly how the machine has been modded. It seems to me it’s much easier to just outright ban all mods.

Do you have to mod your box to play pirated software? Your post and the op’s article seem to conflate the two, but I don’t really see that the two things are related (other then both will apparently get you banned from X-Box live). I don’t know anything about the X-Box though, perhaps there’s some technical reason you can’t play pirated software on an unmodded box?

[yojimbo]

@Simplicio

Do you have to mod your box to play pirated software? Your post and the op’s article seem to conflate the two, but I don’t really see that the two things are related (other then both will apparently get you banned from X-Box live). I don’t know anything about the X-Box though, perhaps there’s some technical reason you can’t play pirated software on an unmodded box?

The xbox will only read games with DRM info on it. A pirated games will not have this info so you need to chip your xbox so it will read pirate copies.

[MJinks]

I must admit, it never occurred to me that replacing the HDD would be considered an illegal mod. Is this true with the PS3 too? I’m sure I’ve seen a guide to replacing the HDD in the official PS3 mag. so I hope not…

[Palooka]

@Johnny_L.A

I don’t follow. If I put a bigger hard drive on my computer, I’m no closer to piracy than I was with a smaller drive.

You can run your own boot loader and bypass copy protection.

It was true of the Xbox anyway. Dunno if it still is for 360. Oh, and it’s is called softmodding.

[Kobal2]

@Johnny_L.A

I don’t follow. If I put a bigger hard drive on my computer, I’m no closer to piracy than I was with a smaller drive.

If I’m not mistaken, Microsoft recently added a way to install your games on the hard drive, so you don’t have to put the disc in to play them. I figure it would therefore be possible to install pirate games from your PC to a hard drive, then plug it on an Xbox and voila, game works without having to mod your console further.

And/or people could just trade each other their games, install them to the hard drive and play them all they want, since there’s no further disc check. Two people playing one copy of a game… you could see why Microsoft would want to stomp on that kind of thing. Why, you could even rent tons of games, install them and play them forever. Which is fine right now, since to do that you *have *to shell out N times 100 bucks directly to Microsoft for additional console hard drives, because you can only install so many full DVDs to a 40, 80 or 120 Gigs drive. But paying less money, and to a third party to boot ? That will just not do.

[yojimbo]

IIRC even if you installed to HD you still need to put the disk in to launch the game.

I don’t install to HD as I only have a 20GB drive

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

@yojimbo

IIRC even if you installed to HD you still need to put the disk in to launch the game.

I don’t install to HD as I only have a 20GB drive

This is correct. I know of someone that still mods. There’s something that he has that tells the DVD drive that there’s a disc in there, even though there isn’t.

[TBG]

@Least_Original_User_Name_Ever

There’s something that he has that tells the DVD drive that there’s a disc in there, even though there isn’t.

Not on a 360 he doesn’t. 360 modding is done mostly by flashing the DVD drive with a custom firmware, which tells it to treat backed up discs as original discs. That’s it. There’s no way to play without a disc, just the disc no longer has to be an original copy once modded.

Also, at this point, you really don’t want to be using such a flashed drive. MS has been banning such consoles at an alarming rate, and they aren’t just blocking them from connecting to Live, as in previous ban waves, they’re also fucking with the functionality of the hard drives.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

@TBG

Not on a 360 he doesn’t. 360 modding is done mostly by flashing the DVD drive with a custom firmware, which tells it to treat backed up discs as original discs. That’s it. There’s no way to play without a disc, just the disc no longer has to be an original copy once modded.

Also, at this point, you really don’t want to be using such a flashed drive. MS has been banning such consoles at an alarming rate, and they aren’t just blocking them from connecting to Live, as in previous ban waves, they’re also fucking with the functionality of the hard drives.

Yep. On a 360, he does.
Yoda has spoken.

[Munch]

So what is GameStop going to do to control buying banned consoles? Stop buying for a while? Hook them up?